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Zavandor, the land of gem mining. After Mines of Zavandor, Gnomes of Zavandor is the second mining-themed set title in the fantasy world. Unlike its predecessor, Gnomes of Zavandor has a strictly economical engineat its core.

The swordfish season at the Flemish Cap is seven months long, from April to November. That’s the time you have in Swordfish to build up a fishing fleet and go out to catch fish. Some of you will get rich, others will get wet when their boats go down in a storm. It’s not an easy life as a swordfish fisher.

Very few board and card games come out of Japan. It’s not because they don’t exist there, they just don’t make it to Europe or the US. Alderac Entertainment is working on changing that with their Big in Japan series, games by Japanese designers, first published in Japan and for the first time translated to English. That’s why we get to play Love Letter.

Dwarves, Goblins and Knights are all united in a trick-taking card game that sounds easy and simple, there’s not even a trump colour. But The Dwarf King has changing scoring rules, wacky special cards and the best illustrations I’ve seen in a card game recently.

It is the Countess’ flower ball, and you are invited. Since the countess kind of digs flowers (not literally, she had gardeners for that…) – you want to bring her the most beautiful bouquet of flowers and thus get the most sympathy points. But beware – the countess may be a bit greedy for the flowery stuff – but excessiveness is not rewarded. After all it is still Noblesse Oblige!

Space is big. Big and empty. That’s what our science teachers told us. It’s also dead – and deadly – wrong. Wherever our exploration vessel shows up, nasty things are just waiting to blow us up. To get back in one piece, all players have to cooperate and deal with a tight time limit while the computer is yelling at them about everything going wrong.

You don’t often have 25 players to fit into one game. But when you do, what are you going to do? Name one single game that fits that many people and doesn’t involve drinking. Well, we have one for you now.

Games about making dresses are a tough sell. Between games about conquest, economic success and survival, tailoring just doesn’t compare. So to stand out, a game about making ballroom gowns needs to excel in other areas. Having well linked games mechanics and a new take on deck-building might do the trick for Rococo.